‘We Couldn’t Do Anything’: Family Drowns in Seoul Basement During Floods By Choe Sang-Hun, Aug. 10, 2022, NY Times
In Seoul, a city where sky-high housing prices are one of the biggest political issues, living high and dry in tall apartment buildings built by the country’s conglomerates like Samsung and Hyundai is a status symbol.
But the poor often live in cheap, damp and musty banjiha. Hundreds of thousands live in such homes in the congested metropolitan area, where they struggle to find jobs, save money and educate their children to overcome growing inequality.
Over the years, Seoul has offered to help those living in such basement apartments, providing them with pumps and other equipment to fight floods. It has also renovated sewer systems in low-lying districts to help drain rainwater more quickly. The
government has urged those living in semi-underground basements to move to state-owned apartments with cheap rents.
Still, thousands of families live in banjiha, fearing floods each monsoon season. They build small dikes with sandbags around their homes. When the floodwater recedes, they put their clothing and furniture in alleyways to dry. In a survey in 2020, more
than half of the 500 semi-underground households in two districts in Siheung, just southwest of Seoul, reported their homes submerged in rainwater.
“When I returned home from work, I found my banjiha under water,” a semi-underground dweller wrote on the South Korean web portal Naver on Tuesday. “It felt as if heaven had crashed down on me.”
On Tuesday, when President Yoon Suk-yeol visited the neighborhood where the family of three died, their home was still filled with waist-high floodwater. Pillows, furniture and plastic bags floated inside. Mr. Yoon had to squat on the street
outside to look down into the home through the street-level window.
The neighborhood was strewn with bags of garbage, rain-damaged furniture and electronics that families dragged out of their basement homes. “There is hardly anything we can salvage,” said Park Kyong-ja, 77, who has lived in the neighborhood for 26
years.
Choi Tae-young, the head of the Seoul Metropolitan Fire and Disaster Headquarters, blamed the floodwater for blocking the door of the family’s home. But neighbors accused the government of failing to alert residents to the coming floods. The city
did not warn of the danger of a nearby stream overflowing until 9:21 p.m. Monday, according to local media and neighbors.
From inside their home, the family of three called neighbors between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., appealing for help because they could not get out. The teenager’s mother, who was identified by the police and local media only by her last name, Hong, also called
her mother in the hospital at 8:37 p.m., saying that she could not open the door because of the floodwater, according to the daily newspaper JoongAng Ilbo.
“When I got out and rushed to their home, it was already filled with water and I could not see the inside,” Kim In-sook, a neighbor, told reporters. Police and firefighters could pump out the water only hours later.
Hong Seok-cheol, 46, who lives in a semi-underground home next door, left at 7:45 p.m. on Monday to eat out with his wife. When the couple returned home 40 minutes later, they were shocked to find the alleyway flooding. Their home was filled with water.
“The rain came so fast and furious and the pressure on drainage pipes underground was so strong that they burst open, worsening the flood,” Mr. Hong said. “There was no way my wife and I could have made out if we had been trapped inside.”
Some of the household items belonging to the family of three sat outside the four-story building on Wednesday, including a white teddy bear. In the underground garage, four cars were caked with mud.
“The torrential rainfall was the worst in 115 years,” Mr. Yoon, the president, said during a meeting with emergency response officials on Wednesday. “The poor and the weak are more vulnerable to natural disasters. Our country will become safe when
they feel safe.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/10/world/asia/south-korea-floods-basement.html
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